US President Joe Biden signed the Quantum Computing Cybersecurity Preparedness Act into law last week. The legislation is designed to secure the federal government’s systems and data against quantum-enabled data breaches. The law aims to get ahead of the trend before quantum computing reaches the point in which they are able to break existing cryptographic algorithms, which is expected to occur in the next 5-10 years. At this point, all digital information would become potentially vulnerable to threat actors under current encryption protocols.
The act was co-sponsored by Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and is a bipartisan act that introduces a number of obligations on federal agencies to prepare for more security cryptography in the face of the threat of quantum computing. These include requirements to maintain inventories of information technology, migrating iT systems, and more. The requirements must be completed within six months of the law being enacted, which will occur over the next year.
Read More: President Biden Signs Quantum Cybersecurity Preparedness Act into Law
